1811.} L£xtracts from the Portfolio of a Manof Letters. . 41 
is the enormous and ruinous expence of 
maintaining a large number of men, with- 
out any civil employment for their sup- 
port; an expence, which neither the land 
nor trade of this realm-can possibly bear 
much longer, without public failure ! 
No Englishman, therefore, can be 
truly loyal, who opposes these essential 
principles of the English law, whereby 
the people are required, to have ‘‘ arms of 
defence and peace,” for mutual as well 
as private defence: for a standing army 
of regular soldiers is entirely repugnant 
to the constitution of England, and the 
genius of its inhabitants. 
Standing armies were not unknown, 
indeed, to our ancestors in very early 
times, but they were happily opposed by 
them, and declared illegal. A remarka- 
bleinstance of this is related by Sir Ed- 
ward Coke, in his 7th rep. p. 443, (Cal- 
- vin’s case,) but with a very erroneous ap- 
plication of the doctrine, (as there is 
in many other instances of that particular 
report,) for which the chancellor or 
judges, probably, who spoke, and not 
the reporter, must one day be answer- 
able. “It appeareth, by Bracton, lib. 
iii. tract 2. c. 15, fol. 134, thac Canutus, 
the Danish king, having settled himself 
in this kingdom in peace, kept, notwith- 
Standing, (for the better continuance 
thereof ) great armies within this realm.” 
[Yet Bracton was more wise and honour- 
able than to conceive or hiat that great 
armies, so kept by the king, were proper 
instruments ‘‘ for the better continuance 
of peace;” for he says no such thing, this 
being only a disloyal conceit of some 
modern judge, concerned in the argument 
of Calvin’s case: but to return to the 
words of the feporter.] ‘¢ The peers 
and nobles of England, distasting this 
Overnment. by arms and _ armies, 
ors accipitrem, quia semper vivit in 
armis,) wisely and politiquely persuaded 
the king, that they would provide for the 
_ Safety of iim and his people, and yet his 
_ armies, carrying with them many incon- 
Veniencies, should be withdrawn,” &c. 
: 
(This would be a proper language and 
true policy for a free British parliament 
to adopt.) ‘ Hereupon” (says the ree 
porter)  Canutus presently withdrew his 
armies, and within a while after he lost 
his crown,” &c. 
Iiere again the judge, whoever-he was 
that spoke, betrayed a most disloyal pre- 
judice in favour of “a government by 
arms and armies,” which led him into a 
notorious falsehood! for, though the for- 
mer part of the sentence is true, that 
king Canute ** withdrew his armies;” yet 
the latter part, that, ‘¢ within a while 
after, he Jost his crown,” is totally false; 
and the judge, by asserting that ground- 
less circumstance, seemed inclined to ine 
sinuate, that the withdrawing the armies 
occasioned the (supposed) loss of the 
crown, which was far from being the case. 
The great and noble Canute reaped the 
benefit of his prudent and generous con-, 
formity-to the free constitution of this 
limited monarchy ; for he enjoyed a long 
and glorious reign, after he sent back his 
Danish soldiers; which, aceording to 
Matthew of Westminster, (p. 403,) was 
in the year 1018; and he heid the crowa 
with dignity and glory to the end of his 
life, in the year 1035, when he was bu 
ried at Winchester with royal pomp 
(regio more, ib. p, 409): and his two sons 
also, who separately succeeded him, died 
likewise kings of England, for they lose 
noc the kingdom but by natural deaths, 
and the want of heirs, 
Happy would it have been for Enge 
Jand, had all succeeding kings -been as 
wise and truly politic as the great Canute, 
who feared not to commit the care of his 
own. person, and those of his foreign 
friends that attended him, to the free 
laws and limited constitution of this 
kingdom, 
The old English maxim, however, 
against ‘¢ a government by arms and ar 
mies,” ought never to be forgotten: 
“ Odimus accipitrem, quia semper yivit 
in armis.” 
4 
i 
” 
*” 
Extracts from the Portfolio of a Man of Letters, 
a 
m3 ; 
STIGAND, ARCHBISUOP OF CANTERBURY- 
E was infamous in life, altogether 
unlearned, of heavy judgment and 
pexending: sottishly serviceable both 
to pleasure and sloth; in covetousness be- 
h the baseness of rusticity, insomuch 
_Monraty Mac. No. 209, 
as he would oftenswear that he had not one 
penny upon the earth, and yet, by a key, 
which he did wear about his neck, great 
treasures of his were found under the 
ground. And this was a grief and sick. 
ness to honest minds, that such spurious 
and 
